windows.h no such file or directory (compile c code on linux) [closed]

Question

I have a c program that includes a header . This program works fine on windows but on linux when I compile the code with:

gcc main.c -Wall -o main

I get:

main.c:2:10: fatal error windows.h: No such file or directory compilation terminated

Do you have any idea why this error happens and how to fix?

Answer 1

The problem is that your code is using the windows.h header file to get function declarations for Windows-only functions. This file does not normally exist on Linux, because its installations of toolchains (such as GCC) will (by default) only include the files needed to compile for Linux.

You have a few options:

1. As Ed Heal suggested, port the code to Linux. That means you would remove the inclusion of windows.h, and replace all the function calls that used the Windows API with their Linux equivalents. This will make your source code only work on Linux, unless you can refactor the OS-dependent calls into platform-agnostic code. A word of warning: unless the program you're working with is trivial, this is not an easy task. There's no guarantee that every Windows API function has a Linux equivalent.

2. Install a Windows toolchain for your build system, which should include windows.h, and cross-compile your code. This will result in a binary that won't work on Linux, but will work on Windows.

3. A middle ground between those two options would be to actually do both, and use conditional compilation to allow you to selectively compile for one target or another.